It takes some effort to fish for the LEAST obvious answer to the question of why abortion increased by 19% in the space of twelve months in Scotland. Indeed, the BBC has trawled an entire Atlantic Ocean of spurious supposition in search of one whale of an excuse: TikTok.  

In an article titled “Doctors warn about social media link to abortion rise”, the BBC brandished its big catch of the day, Dr Sinead Cook’s speculation that scare stories and misinformation shared on social media about contraception might explain the dramatic surge in abortion.

“I’ve had some patients who have told me they’ve seen videos, particularly on TikTok that have scared them”, said Dr Cook, the Scottish Chair of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health “Quite a few young people I’m seeing are talking about wanting to have a break from contraception because they’re worried about being on it long term.”

Dr Cook continued: “We know some contraceptives can affect some people’s mood and we can often find something different for them so it’s really important that they come and have a good discussion about what might be a better alternative for them.

“We know from our local clinic when we’ve been asking people about use of contraception that for the majority of people who’ve said that they’re not using contraception when they’ve fallen pregnant and ended up attending abortion clinic, for a lot of them it’s either previous experience of side effects or worries about side effects that have stopped them using contraception.”

Of course, the BBC latched on like a limpet to Dr Cook’s “gut feeling”, the anecdote of one doctor, surmising that “misinformation” and not the proliferation of abortion is to blame.

To be fair to Dr Cook, it appears that the BBC has been leading the witness in search of a response that exonerates abortion apologists of all blame; Dr Cook does state that “there’s probably a number of things that have contributed to this [rise in abortion], not just one thing”. But surely social media is the least significant factor.

Surging abortion rates

Abortion rose by 19% in Scotland in 2022, when there were 16,584 abortions, as reported by SPUC last May. 98.8% of these abortions were chemical abortions, 56.2% of which took place entirely at home as part of the DIY abortion scheme introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

England and Wales saw a similar rise of 17% in the first half of 2022, with 54% of abortions taking place at home. In just six months in England and Wales there were 123,219 abortions in total. Meanwhile, the birth rate dropped by 3% in 2022, there being almost 20,000 fewer births compared with 2021.

Yet the BBC would have the public believe that social media is to blame, not DIY abortion. The insult here is not the positing of this one factor but rather the disproportionate emphasis the BBC places on it, to the point of absurdity.

Mainstream obsession with misinformation

Mainstream media outlets, particularly the BBC, have become obsessed with the ostensible rise of misinformation in recent times – ever since the seismic events of Brexit and President Trump’s election victory in 2016, which shook the gatekeepers at the BBC who then convinced themselves that misinformation is the source of the world’s woes. This has become an obsession that has led the corporation to advance some lamentably foolish theories.

While “fake news” is undoubtedly real, it is hardly new or reliant on social media; misinformation has existed since at least the 13th century BC when the Trojans were led to believe that the Greeks, after ten years of war, had given up and gone home – in fact, they were in the next bay. More recently, the astronomer Percival Lowell advanced the eccentric idea that lines observed on Mars were a complex network of Martian waterways, an extraterrestrial equivalent of the Grand Union Canal.

The theory that women are too scared to use contraception, and would rather risk pregnancy and abortion, is also a curious hypothesis, one that might even be true. Nonetheless, asserting that women reading such accounts on TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter) is the main takeaway from the 19% rise in abortion in Scotland is ludicrous. So, why dedicate an entire article to it?

Deflection of inconvenient truths

Misinformation, for the mainstream media, has become a convenient excuse for the guardians of the prevailing narrative to deflect inconvenient truths back at new media rivals who question the party line. Rather than addressing the elephant in the room, the BBC leaves the room and locks the door. In the case of abortion, to address the 19% rise in abortion honestly would require some self-reflection and soul-searching on the part of the pro-abortion BBC, which would also have to admit that the recent policy of DIY abortion is the most obvious culprit.

It is curious that the BBC should address this issue at all. From the point of view of any apologist for abortion, why would they be troubled by 19% more abortion if, in their view, abortion is a right? This is what they wanted, surely, access to abortion, its normalisation and proliferation, no longer “legal and rare” but legal and as easy to obtain as a packet of Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles.

Even so, the BBC is nonetheless obliged to proffer some excuse to the public that may still have questions to ask. The BBC is happy to respond so long as the abortion industry is protected from criticism.

The normalisation of abortion

The real story behind these statistics is that abortion, long before TikTok, was undergoing a process of normalisation – since abortion leads to more abortion – to the point that society considers it another form of contraception. Chemical abortion was then expanded even further through the cynical scheme of DIY abortion, later made permanent, taking advantage of the pandemic to further normalise the killing of unborn babies, even at home – though it is hardly normal to see one’s child circling down a drain, as one woman named Sophie saw:

“There were big chunks coming out of me. I would break down sobbing in the shower because chunks were coming out of me – it was absolutely horrifying. I know that this isn’t everyone’s experience, but I think most people can agree that it isn’t a nice sight to see coming out of you.”

Even if TikTok has put a number of women off contraception, DIY abortion hardly seems a better option, unless of course they bought into the propaganda that abortion is “normal” and even a “happy” event, as some warped activists promote. And where is the BBC’s concern for the psychological and physical well-being of women like Sophie?

The BBC would ultimately do better service to women and the truth if it focused on Sophie’s story and the traumas of DIY abortion and the real reason behind its surging numbers, not only in Scotland but also in England and Wales. But they will never do this because they believe in and advocate abortion and its normalisation. Any excuses that absolve abortion ideologues will do at the BBC, and so only the disingenuous need apply.